Group 1:
M9901004
M9901005
M9901009
M9901206
程永真
黃曼欣
曾云杉
曾郁雯
ABOUT BSN
ABOUT DANONE
ABOUT DANONE (FROM1970S~1996)
DANONE’S VISION
2006: A similar project
took shape in
Bangladesh
2004: Launched the
yogurt Danimal in the
city of Soweto, South
Africa
2001: Launched the
Danone Way
FRANCK RIBOUD’S CONTRIBUTION
 He directed to company’s focus towards health and nutrition
 He turned a Western European company into an international
organization
 He changed how the organization was managed
FRANCK RIBOUD’S CONTRIBUTION
2007: The company showed
an operating margin of
13.4%
2004: Established a vital
business division in the
Asia-Pacific
2002: Launched a research
center in Paris
DANONE’S POSITION
 Global leader in fresh dairy products and was tied with Nestle in
beverages
 Danone was second only to Kraft Foods in biscuits and cereal
products
 Danone had revenues of €14 billion (14.98billion, 2009),
compared with Nestle with revenues of €60 billion, and Kraft
Foods with revenues of €25 billion
DANONE’S BUSINESS LINE
 4 main blockbuster products:
Danonino
Actimel
Vitalinea
Activia
 In 2008, Danone reorganized into 4 business lines: Fresh Dairy
Products, Water and Beverages, Baby Food, and Clinical Nutrition.
GLOBAL LOCATIONS OF GROUPE DANONE FACTORIES
MANAGING KNOWLEDGE FOR
COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE
 Challenge: Making product, customer, and operational
information available
 Question:
a tension between a more efficient top-down approach and local
managers’ desire for autonomy.
the role of information technology in managing knowledge
 Topic:
Local markets(地方市場)
Decentralization and Integration(分權與整合)
Prior Approaches to Knowledge Management(KM的前處理)
The Human Connection(人與人之間的聯繫)
LOCAL MARKETS
 Danone’s strategy: decentralization
Close to customer
Get new product earlier
 Nestle V.S Danone
DECENTRALIZATION AND INTEGRATION
 Being decentralized could be confusing for frontline managers:
Lack clear directions from headquarters and didn’t know whom
to turn for advice(垂直)
there’s little horizontal communication among the larger
divisions.(水平)
 No a lot of quantified organizational expertise.
 No library with a bunch of files.
 There’s a little incentive to formally categorize things into
database.
CBU=Country Business Units
DECENTRALIZATION AND INTEGRATION(CON’T)
 The top-down to re-prioritize and re-concentrate
 The bottom-up to nourish-to listen to the market , the latest
ingredients, the latest innovations , to know what works with the
competition
PRIOR APPROACHES TO
KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
Acceleration
Units
Growth Too
The Growth
Program
THE GROWTH PROGRAM
 In the late 1990s, Jacques Vincent, had initiated the Growth
Program to foster growth through sharing brand assets among
the CBUs to develop blockbuster brands.
 Jacques Vincent wanted us to use our CBUs to leverage practices
rather than to use consultants.
GROWTH TOO

Goal: accelerate growth by identifying, analyzing, and
formalizing good practices in the 70 CBUs to ensure that these
good practices were adopted by all CBUs.
 e.g. The diamond- a hexagon charting six key parameters of a
brand used to measure a brand’s effectiveness and progress
ACCELERATION UNITS
 international working groups:
Specialized in a particular concept or brand. An Acceleration Unit
might have between 4 and 40 high-level members from a single
function or from multiple functions
THEMIS
 They want build a model that was a continuous improvement
process and we came up with the Danone Operating Model, a list
of 144 formalized best practices, using a tool called THEMIS
 THEMIS : Danone’s group-wide SAP (business software) system
THE HUMAN CONNECTION
 The traditional knowledge management
Using technology, uploading files, building databases
 It was not the optimal path for Danone:
Most people didn’t use the portal
Feel most comfortable talking to each other
Systems and processes also slowed down the business
 Sharing wasn’t a natural thing->
find a way to encourage people to share
THE HUMAN CONNECTION
THE NETWORKING ATTITUDE
 In 2002, The Networking Attitude was launched as a new way of
communication to enable and encourage staffs in different work
sites to share knowledge and good practices in the enterprise.
 To circulate good practices and make people in units far from
each other share knowledge.
 It’s a way to work transversally and to break the silos, to absorb
and combine talents and knowledge coming from different
places within and outside the organization.
MAKE IT YOURS
 As employee’s commitment is very important, several social tools
were designed to make people enjoy the activity and see how
knowledge exchange can benefit them. Such social tools include
Marketplace, Message-in-a-bottle, T-shirts, Who’s Who, and
Communities.
MARKETPLACE (1/4)
 Marketplace is a two-hour activity held during other meetings or
conference scheduled by the target group.
 People were not invited specifically to a marketplace and were
usually unaware.
MARKETPLACE (2/4)
Operate mode
Facilitators
Facilitators arranged and ran marketplaces, acting as
intermediaries to organize the exchange of practices.
Before the marketplace, the facilitators collected
givers’ good practices and wrote them down in The
Little Book of Good Practices.
 Givers
The Giver is sharing the experience of sorting
out a practical problem encountered in
her/his own CBU.
They offering good practices, or solutions to
problems.
MARKETPLACE (3/4)
Operate mode (cont.)
Takers
The Taker is anyone who finds it useful to use a
solution proposed by the Givers.
 Interest checks
When approaching a giver who
had a good practice of interest
to the taker, the latter would
“pay” one of seven “interest
checks” to the former,
symbolizing the transaction.
MARKETPLACE (4/4)
Event’s theme is set up to build
loosened-up environment with
costumes, role-playing and lively
music.
The Little Book of Good Practices
One book featured 33 summaries of
transferred good practices in diverse
functions.
MESSAGE-IN-A-BOTTLE
 In this activity encouraged bottom-up approach by bringing
takers to a small group of givers who were willing to give them
solutions and good practices and they would take their turns to
be takers.
 As it is important that people should feel free to ask for helps,
there was no observation.
 So far, about 115 message-in-a-bottle sessions had been
organized involving more than 3,000 people.
T-SHIRTS
 T-shirts session is held when the team doesn’t have enough time
for longer activity.
 Participants write good suggestions on the front of their T-shirts
and write down their problems on the back. And then they all
gather in a group in a learning session.
WHO’S WHO
 All the employees have their own profile page, they can take part
in sharing information of their interesting topics.
 When having problems, they can search for some good solutions
and people in the area where they need help.
COMMUNITIES
 These communities (networks) were established to make sure
that employees still keep sharing their knowledge even without
marketplaces.
 Within a network, there were 10-15 members with a leader.
 Members posted questions and useful information to keep the
network alive and they met up once in 6-18 months.
ASSESSING THE NETWORKING ACTIVITIES
 Because of the Networking Attitude,
far more people know who to ask for help now.
 Tangible results proved that people
from different divisions could benefit
from each other’s experiences.
ASSESSING THE NETWORKING ACTIVITIES
 You need the relation and exchange between people.
 At Danone we foster games between people during which they
can exchange ideas. I see this as our competitive advantage.
ASSESSING THE NETWORKING ACTIVITIES
So what?
It’s good!
It’s good!
Latin
Asia
Anglo-Saxons
ASSESSING THE NETWORKING ACTIVITIES
 He sending e-mails to the 300 participants
ASSESSING THE NETWORKING ACTIVITIES
 Networking is a tool to improve your efficiency in solving your key
issues or priorities.
 If it’s not focused on solving your key issues, it will not be very
useful.
EXTENDING THE NETWORKING ATTITUDE
 Deeper: more employees
 Wider: outside the company
 Richer: for innovation
DEEPER: MORE EMPLOYEES
 All 90,000 Danone employees could benefit from the Networking
Attitude to share good practices.
 We learned a lot from each other.
 Now I can call them instead of trying to find a solution by myself.
WIDER: OUTSIDE THE COMPANY
 Using tools to build external bridges to partners, suppliers,
customers, and consumers.
 Sharing practices with retailers such as Wal-Mart and Carrefour
(家樂福).
 When there is a shortage of our products on the shelf, Danone is
penalized by the retailer for its loss of sales.
RICHER: FOR INNOVATION
 Going a step further than sharing knowledge—to create new
knowledge by inviting employees from various divisions.
 Danone had conducted seven so-called co-building sessions
getting richer
 The good practices of today are not going to be the good
practices of tomorrow.
THE FUTURE
 Should they extend the concept to be deeper, wider, or richer?
 Should they impose more structure, evaluation, or rewards on the
Networking Attitude to make it more viable for the long term?
 Should it remain as it was?